by Jenn Stark
“Roger that.” Nikki took another sip of her concoction as well. “We dance for another thirty, tops, so try to fake your way through that. Then the show starts.”
We circulated through the crowd over the next half hour, and a few trends surfaced. The women were young, the men decidedly mixed. The older men had money; the younger had the hipster vibe of the new generation of Connecteds. They were all quite a bit smarter than I wanted to give them credit for, based on their discussions. There was definitely a feel of solidarity, camaraderie, that didn’t sit well.
“They know why they’re here, don’t they?” I said to Brody when we regrouped. “They’re users willing to be used.”
“I picked up on that.” We’d located a high-top table near the opening of the dance-floor area, and Brody grimaced over another swallow of his beer. We’d both managed to nurse our bottles down to backwash, and Nikki had gone after a fresh round. “You feel anything from what we ingested?” Brody asked me.
“Not yet, but I’ll let you know if you start squawking like a chicken. It’s likely a sense heightener, maybe a mood lightener, anything that encourages a body to unload his wallet faster.”
Nikki came back. “For show,” she said, setting the new bottles on the table and lifting my first one experimentally. “No more drinking, either one of you.”
“I gotta hit the facilities anyway,” Brody said, his step back a little uncertain. Nikki pointed.
“Back there, lovechop. Don’t get lost on the way, or you might not appreciate what you find.”
“Figured that out already.” Brody saluted, then ambled off, and I stared after him curiously. His gait was suddenly very…relaxed. Too relaxed. He was also swiveling his head around so far I thought it might spin off, checking everyone out in the room. “Um, Nikki? What’s in our beers?”
“Finally got the down low on that, since we actually drank the stuff. Apparently, my bartender buddy was watching, so good for you both. Bottom line, it’s nothing you need to worry about, temporary effects, but it’s also not something you want to keep drinking. And you need to come stand by me.” She patted the table, and I obligingly squeezed forward until I was wedged between her and the mass of humanity starting to press in on us.
“You wanna explain?”
“Keep your distance from Detective Doublemint for at least the next half hour or so. Apparently the bartender thought I was with a couple of guys—saw you at a distance, couldn’t tell.”
“He thought I was a guy?”
“Can I help that you look like a refugee from Hollister? A gray T-shirt and black jeans? Really?” Nikki shook her head, disgusted. “Anyway, don’t get your boxers in a twist, bro. You got a shot of testosterone and a male-cued aphrodisiac, so you’re safe. Brody, however, will want to knock up anything in a bra here in about five minutes, so unless you want his tongue down your throat, stay on this side of me, ’kay?”
“Oh my God.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. “We should tell him.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” She grinned as the music amped up another level, then slid a glance to me. “You haven’t asked me about the kids, by the way. Were you gonna get around to that sometime?”
At my confused stare, she tilted her head, her expression wry. “Joe, Bobby, and Clara. Ring any bells?”
“Oh.” I shook my head, remembering the names she’d given me when I’d begun following her to the River Styx. “You said they saved you,” I said, suddenly awkward. “I realized—I don’t really know that much about you, not really. And I want to know, if you—you know, if you’d like to tell me. Who you were before you came to Vegas, who you were before you met me.”
“Lot of water under that bridge,” Nikki cracked, but her smile was gentle as she eyed me over her glass. “But some of it was good. And the best of it were those kids. I remember when—”
Brody plowed into our table so hard he nearly shoved me into the next knot of drinkers.
“Hey, beautiful!” he practically shouted at Nikki, and her head snapped around so fast, she could’ve gotten whiplash.
Before Nikki could stop him, Brody put his hands on either side of her face, and kissed her full on the mouth. And kissed.
And…kissed.
“Right.” Finally breaking away, Nikki whirled around, her gaze on the clearing room as I tried desperately not to self-combust with laughter. “Eyes up front, eyes up—hey!” She jumped toward me, and I didn’t want to imagine what Brody had copped a feel of. I clamped my lips together and stared ahead as the music rose to a deafening crescendo.
A parade of cigarette girls flooded into the crowd, and their trays offered way more than tobacco. The first rotation was a round of illegal but decidedly non-technoceutical drugs, enough of them that Brody stopped fooling around and stared as well, his face cop-focused once again regardless of the state of the rest of his body. On either side of each girl with the product stood a thug and a money guy. Far from offering a cash-only transaction, the money guy had a souped-up phone, ready for swiping. Ah, commerce.
The flow of women and attendants disappeared into the crowd fairly quickly, the routine obviously well ingrained. In a few moments, another wave of cigarette girls showed up. These bore technoceuticals, but judging from the buzz going through the crowd, it wasn’t the usual batch.
“A special delivery made available by your new management,” the announcer cooed over the speakers. “Credit card purchase. Guaranteed to restore any perceived loss of psychic ability—and raise current ability levels to the next stage. You want this, trust me.”
The crowd surged forward. “Guess we know which Connecteds are no longer feeling the pulse,” Nikki said wryly, as she braced herself against the pulse of bodies. She whipped out her own burner credit card and paid for a baggie from the closest girl. As she did, I stared the young woman in the eye. A smile was fixed on her face, but she blinked rapidly, her eyes scanning the room in quick, jerking jumps.
“Hey,” I said, trying to catch her attention.
“No fraternization,” the thug beside her said. “Even other women. You want to play, you wait till after.” He flashed me a card, and I took it, too startled to do otherwise. At least he recognized me as female, so that was a step in the right direction. The man continued to stand too close, and I wondered what he’d been served earlier in the night.
Nikki completed her transaction, and the set continued on, leaving us to examine our goods. Most of the people around us didn’t have that restraint, tearing into the bags without hesitation and downing the pills inside with gulps of the tricked-out alcohol. “This could be bad,” Nikki muttered.
“You recognize any of it?” Brody leaned forward, and Nikki shook her head.
“Impossible to. That’s the beauty of capsules, no way to tell their effect until you test it. And this—” She pointed to a vial about the size of a perfume sample. “This you can swallow or inject, if you happen to be carrying your personal hypodermic with you. That’ll hit your bloodstream either fast or faster.”
“Don’t open the bag,” Brody said. We’ll want to get it to a lab and check for prints. Though I can’t imagine they’d be so stupid as to leave those lying around.”
“Agreed. And—” Nikki lifted her head. “Oh, shit.”
A man walked out on the stage, carrying a microphone and sporting a broad grin. Behind him, a line of young men and women stood clustered at the edge of the shadows. They were dressed in shifts that extended to midthigh in long strips of cloth, enough for some shred of propriety but little more. “Here we go,” she muttered.
“While those among you already satisfied enjoy your purchases, we are elevating our game tonight. Exclusively for the elite of the Las Vegas Connected community, we offer for your consideration the newest batch of trained adepts.”
Adepts?
Beside me, Nikki’s eyes popped wide. “What’s a trained adept?”
“You’ve no doubt become aware of your newest neighbors in Vegas, and we k
now you have questions. These adepts will provide the answers. Chosen specifically for their ability to augment the power of up to three Connecteds, they have been further trained and calibrated to serve as a prism for any ability, increasing your skills while creating beauty and serenity wherever you go.”
My stomach churned. “They’re augment slaves,” I said. “I didn’t know they could do that. I didn’t know that was a thing.” I squinted hard, noticing the metallic rope that snaked through the line of adepts, connected to their wristbands. Magnetic restraints? “Can you see their arms?”
“Tatted,” Nikki confirmed. “Can’t tell the design from here, though.”
“Right.” I grimaced. “I don’t think there’s any doubt.”
The man rattled on, listing the attributes of the young men and women standing on the stage—their youth, their grace, their bone-melting psychic ability. The adepts’ vacant expressions behind their winsome smiles almost seemed to goad the crowd further.
Not the entire crowd, though. Most of the Connecteds standing at rapt attention were not the laughing, happy, drugged-out twenty-somethings gyrating to the music. These were men and women old enough to know better. Old enough to have ethics. Restraint.
Old enough to call slavery what it was. But they remained entranced anyway, ready to pay the highest dollar to hold on to the power they felt slipping away from them. I tried not to hurl.
Screens glittered to life all around the wide space. “We’ll start the bidding at a hundred thousand dollars,” the man purred.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I would’ve thought that kind of price tag would be enough to keep the bidding low in this crowd, but I was wrong. Each slave had his or her own screen, and handlers quickly separated them from each other, shuffling them to stand on a podium that lit up with a number as the drugged youth stepped on it.
I set my bottle on the high-topped table and scanned the security guards ringing the stage. All of them bristled with weapons, but I only needed one gun. “You pick out a favorite?”
Nikki slid me a glance. “There’s a lot of them, Sara, and one each of us.”
“Not really. There are more of us than you think.” I nodded at the room, and Nikki lifted her brows before scanning the crowd.
“Son of a bitch,” she murmured.
“I think this is the first time that Shiver has hosted a slave auction,” I said.
Surrounding us was the same rollicking group of twenty-somethings, but not all of them were laughing. Many were noticing the screens, the stage, frowning and taken aback by what they were seeing. They were stoned, yes, but they were human.
It was good that some of the people here still were.
Brody, sensing the tension crackling between Nikki and me, shook his head heavily and leaned in. “No, Sara,” he said. “Whatever it is, no.”
“You’re right on the money, dollface. And sorry, Loverboy, you’re wrong this time.” Nikki was relaxing, her expression going almost Zen-like calm. “The drugs are helping diminish the party crowd’s outrage, but they know what this is, even if they don’t understand why it’s happening here, now, tailor-made to harsh their mellow. They know it’s wrong.”
“More of them than security,” I said, lifting my beer to my lips but not drinking.
“Nope, nope, and nope.” Brody shook his head. “Bad idea. Security has better guns than we do, mainly because we don’t have any guns.”
“Ah, Detective Rooks, speaker of reason.” The scent of honeysuckle and jasmine floated over us, and suddenly, Aleksander Kreios was standing next to us at the table, resplendent in a finely tailored charcoal suit. He nodded to the far end of the room, and we saw Armaeus too, tall and silent, cloaked in the shadows.
Nikki let out a low whistle. “Whoa. It’s Batman.”
“Yeah, wait a minute,” I said, frowning at Kreios. “Why are you here? I thought you guys were big fans of nonintervention.” Another thought struck me. “Are you in my head without me realizing it?”
“Your thoughts are your own, fear not.” Kreios smirked. “Detective Rooks, I’m afraid, is an open book. One Armaeus has no issue reading whenever it suits him.” Kreios flicked his fingers. “To answer your other question, as you first alerted Armaeus, this is indeed a slave auction.” He said the words with a disdainful twist of his lips. “There are some things that transcend balance, Armaeus decided. He believes Viktor is not to blame, but that has not eased the antagonism between them. Their argument continues even now. However, he has broken away to observe this situation in person.”
“It’s the two of you?” Brody’s voice was low and steady, the effects of the aphrodisiac apparently worn off. “Any other civilians?”
“Merely the two of us, though we’re hardly civilians, you’ll find.” Kreios glanced around the room. “This is an intriguing mix of Connecteds. And only Connecteds. Interesting, that. Detective Rooks, you’ll find for your purposes that the cameras have been disabled. I suggest respectively that you and the inimitable Miss Dawes rely on me for acquiring your weapons. Sara, you’ll work with the Magician.”
“I don’t think…”
“I’m afraid he insists. As members of the Council, we cannot draw weapons ourselves nor be seen doing so, but we can allow you to reach your full potential.” He shifted as the bidding hit a new threshold. “Now, if you would. This round is near to closing.”
“Fine.” Not willing to remain in this pit any longer than I had to, I set off through the crowd. As I passed the wide doors to the back of the building, however, I slowed. What I saw there made my skin crawl. There wasn’t merely a handful of young men and women waiting in chains, there were easily close to a hundred. A hundred. Clearly, Gamon had wanted to capture my attention, perhaps the attention of the Council. He’d done that and to spare.
I reached Armaeus as the first auction neared its end. He stood in half darkness, and I didn’t feel his touch in my mind as I approached, but I tensed up anyway.
“The best time to strike is when the enemy is distracted, Miss Wilde.”
I blinked and stopped. Armaeus’s voice was in my ear, not my mind, but he remained at a distance. I turned and there was nothing there but the glassy-eyed stoners nearest to the auction floor. He was using vocal projection, but at a subverbal level I’d never experienced before.
“Quit that,” I muttered
“You need my help. I’m giving it.”
This time, the voice was at the other side of my head, but still not inside it, and I had to steel myself against stereo Magician. Closing the last few steps between us, I pivoted to face the stage.
“Nice trick.” I jerked my thumb at the stage. “Now give me something useful. How do we fight them?”
Armaeus gestured beside him, and I took in the two security guards who lay slumped in the shadows, their weapons at their feet. As I leaned down to scoop up the guns, he spoke to me again.
“The glyphs on the victims’ arms are bioluminescent,” he said. “Don’t lose any of them. No one brings slaves into my city.”
The room blacked out.
Instantly, the crowd burst into screams, and a spontaneous stampede erupted. Not toward the doors, however, not everyone. At least half the room pounded toward the guards as well.
The slaves’ glyphs might have been bioluminescent, but the guards were lit up like disco balls, the electronics at their wrists, tablets, ears, and shoulders rendering them glittering targets for the wrath of the faceless crowd. Under cover of darkness, those with something to hide ran, but those who didn’t tore at the guards with both rage and fear, neither watched by cameras nor tracked with human eyes.
Nikki, Brody, and I met in the center of the melee. “Where’s Kreios?” I demanded as we bounded toward the cowering slaves.
“Winked out as soon as the excitement started. Armaeus too.” Nikki gathered the rope and held it out to the slaves, and automatically they latched on to it, their magnetic cuffs snapping into place along the metallic length. �
��I got these.”
“There’s more in the back,” I said.
“Guards are running!” Brody yelled, taking off toward the back doors.
I darted after him, and the moment we cleared the rear entrance to Shiver, we both crashed to the side. A spray of bullets battered us—not only us either, but the braver of the partiers from the front room.
“Get back, get back!” Brody barked, pulling out a second gun. “We need backup,” he growled.
“Already done.” Armaeus’s voice remained in my head, poking and prodding as we lunged forward. I fought back against his intrusion and squinted my eyes against the internal fireworks of that skirmish, breaking into a sweat as the Magician finally backed down. A fraction.
Brody and I caught up to the first of the guards as the sound of distant sirens shattered the night. Half the crowd from the dance floor broke ranks and ran at that point, the threat of arrest stronger than their altruistic urges, especially hopped up on drugs as they were. But enough remained to tackle the guards who stood to fight instead of running, and within a few minutes, at least a dozen men were pinned to the ground, surrounded by tight-faced Connecteds. Shell-shocked, high or not, the partiers had stepped up tonight, and I could tell the reality of what they’d done hadn’t yet hit them. Give it time.
The ambulances arrived shortly after the police cruisers, and as Brody stood talking with his fellow boys in khaki, I rejoined Nikki. She and the bartender had corralled the slaves and a few of the other waitstaff in the main area of the bar again, where the lights had come back on shortly after the initial blackout.
“How many of them?” I asked, and she whipped her hard gaze to mine.
“Seventy-eight,” she said. “I wouldn’t have believed it if we didn’t see it. All of them appear healthy, if not coherent. They’re pretty out of it.” She grimaced.
“Drugs?”
“Gotta be, but more to it than that. They’ve been under for quite a while. These tats anywhere from several weeks to years old. Who the hell knows what they’ve been told while they’ve been kept.” She gestured over the group. “Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, you name it, it’s the United Nations of Connected here, and they were all brought to Vegas tonight? Smells like a trap.”
